Top Free Pen Testing Tools for Developers to Build Secure Apps

Quick Summary: Developers can reduce their security burden by leveraging automated free pen testing tools. They not only automate the tasks but also help them build secure applications while also allowing them to maintain the Agile pace. Keep reading to understand the significance of using free pen test tools by developers in building secure applications.

The tussle between developers and security teams is real, and most organizations hardly pay attention to it. Result? Usually, insecure software applications land in production. Additionally, rapid development and deployment cycles in Agile environments add fuel to the fire, and security fails to keep up with the pace of development.

Changing the software development culture can help overcome the challenges by integrating security into early phases. Early testing reduces vulnerabilities as well as developer frustration. And there comes the role of free penetration testing tools that help developers keep security at the forefront of their development process.

These free pentesting tools make security an essential part of the development process, allowing dev teams to build and release more secure applications while maintaining their Agile speed.

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How Do Free Penetration Testing Tools Help Developers Ensure Security?

Developers can take active participation in security testing by leveraging free tools for pentesting. They can conduct automated tests after every build and reduce the chances of security weaknesses. Let’s check all the uses below.

Fix Issues Early

Free pentesting tools are saviors for developers because they help automate security testing within the SDLC and avoid last-minute changes. These tools identify and exploit vulnerabilities to assess their exploitability and report them through real-time alerts.

So, the application is thoroughly scrutinized by automated pen testing tools before it is moved into the next phases and deployed in production. Early detection and remediation of vulnerabilities will make developers’ work smoother.

Focus on Coding

Often security testing works as a speed bump in Agile development and builds further pressure on developers who are already pissed off from faster code releases. In this situation, free pentesting tools integrated into their toolchains can reduce the burden by performing automated scanning for vulnerabilities and providing instant alerts.

Consequently, they can focus on coding instead of spending hours identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities. Free pen testing tools automate security testing and become an enabler instead of a roadblock to their process.

Save Time

Security issues discovered post-development take a much longer timeframe to fix than those identified and resolved in the early stages of SDLC. The Mean Time-to-Remediate (MTTR) is 270 days for an organization when vulnerabilities are detected. Hence, developers will spend more time fixing vulnerabilities when they are discovered in the testing phase after development.

By testing and detecting vulnerabilities early with free pentesting tools, they can reduce overall time and cost in remediation. It helps them cut down their overall development, testing, and release time by minimizing potential security weaknesses.

Quality Product

Developers can also ensure better quality software applications by leveraging automated pen testing with free tools within the SDLC. Such a security testing tool for developers will enable them to uncover errors and risks in applications before they reach production.

As a result, the quality of the software application is likely to be better. Such applications will have stronger security controls and the risk of cyberattacks will be reduced too.

Build Developer Intuition

Integration of free pen testing tools for regular security checks also develops developers’ intuition about potential risks and loopholes. As they consistently encounter and fix vulnerabilities, they begin to understand the common issues and try to avoid them at the coding level.

As a result, developers can produce more secure code that will minimize the overall security risks and reduce the time it takes in the process. They can identify weaknesses and avoid such issues in the future code, leading to a more security-conscious mindset.

Types of Free Penetration Testing Tools that Developers Can Use

Depending on their type and usage, free pentesting tools that developers use can be categorized as follows:

• Free Web Application Pen Testing Tools: These free tools perform simulated attacks on internet-facing applications to uncover vulnerabilities like XSS, broken authentication, encryption issues, CSRF, and more.
• Free Network Pen Testing Tools: It is also known for infrastructure pen testing that involves evaluating networks. It evaluates network configurations and builds to discover configuration issues related to web app servers, firewalls, and routers.
• Free API Pen Testing Tools: It involves discovering and testing all APIs to identify rogue, zombie, and shadow APIs.
• Free Mobile App Pen Testing Tools: These tools evaluate a mobile app’s security by identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities. They scrutinize various aspects like authentication and authorization, backend APIs, filesystem permissions, etc.

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Top Free Penetration Testing Tools for Developers to Build Secure Applications

The following is a list of the top pen test tools that developers can use free of cost to perform automated security tests and build secure applications.

ZeroThreat

ZeroThreat’s real-time automated penetration testing helps you avoid costly data breaches, reduce pen test efforts by 90%, and maintain compliance. It is a developer-friendly free pentest platform that simulates over 40,000 real-world attacks to uncover vulnerabilities in web apps and APIs. With hacker-like security assessment and AI-powered remediation reports, you can effectively manage vulnerabilities within the development phase.

Metasploit

Metasploit is one of the best free pen testing tools for evaluating networks and servers. As an open-source testing framework, it is easily available and offers pre-built pen testing scripts that you can use to conduct a wide range of simulated attacks. It is a modular framework that tests web applications and networks.

ZAP

Zed Attack Proxy or ZAP is also an open-source and free pentesting tool that evaluates web applications for common vulnerabilities like SQL injection, broken authentication, cross-site scripting, and more. It offers some advanced scripting attacks and proxy, and generates detailed reports to help identify and fix critical vulnerabilities as early as possible.

SQLMap

SQLMap is a free penetration testing tool for database servers that tests them for SQL injection attacks. It supports a wide range of databases, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Amazon Redshift, CockroachDB, MariaDB, and more. With features like database fingerprinting, data overfetching, automated command execution, SQLMap enables developers to perform a comprehensive security assessment.

W3af

W3af is an open-source and one of the top free web application penetration testing tools that helps scrutinize apps for a wide range of vulnerabilities. The tool helps identify and exploit vulnerabilities to assess the risk of potential cyberattacks. With customizable testing, plugins, proxy, and more, it thoroughly tests web apps and provides insights with detailed reports.

Burp Suite

Burp Suite Community Edition is a free pen testing tool with a user-friendly GUI that streamlines and simplifies pentesting. It combines varied tools such as decoder, repeater, comparer, and sequencer. With automated vulnerability scanning, proxy, and customized tests, it empowers teams to simulate different attacks to uncover a wide range of vulnerabilities like IDOR (Insecure Direct Object Reference), SQL injection, XSS, and more.

Nmap

Nmap is a widely used tool for reconnaissance in penetration testing. It analyzes networks and data packets to identify crucial information that helps plan a simulated attack. Nmap is a free and open-source tool with a command-line interface. It scans the target for 6400+ vulnerabilities and identifies weak HTTP headers, open directories, and insecure file permissions.

Secure Every Build with ZeroThreat’s Automated Pentesting

Developers want security to match up with the development speed to ensure faster release cycles. For this, security needs to be a part of the developers’ workflow and ZeroThreat plays a vital role in it. It is designed to meet the requirements of modern dev teams.

By using developer-centric free penetration testing tool, dev teams can streamline vulnerability management. With real-time security assessments, instant alerts, and AI-powered remediation reports, dev teams enjoy stress-free coding.

They can automate vulnerability testing within their SDLC by seamlessly adding ZeroThreat in the CI/CD pipeline at zero cost. It dynamically tests your web apps and APIs to scan for thousands of vulnerabilities, including SQLi, XSS, Insecure Direct Object Reference (IDOR), CSRF, and more.

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Final Thought

Development teams are always on their toes to release code frequently for deployment. They see security testing as a hurdle because of delays in deployment caused by reviews and rework. Free penetration testing tools reduce the tension between the developers and security teams as they embed automated testing into the development cycles.

So, thanks to free pentesting tools, developers can run automated tests and get instant feedback for security. They can implement any changes before the application is moved to the testing team for final review. It will significantly reduce errors and issues, accelerating the development cycle.